814 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXV. 
existence in full panoply like the daughter of Jove. Such con- 
ceptions recall the rhetorical figure which Houzeau (72, Vol. II, 
p. 264) aptly uses in his discussion of this same matter: “The 
spark," he says, “which we draw from a rod of wax is analo- 
gous to that from the Leyden jar and we attribute it to elec- 
tricity. Had we from the very first sought to liken it to the 
thunderbolt, the difference of proportions, the quantitative ine- 
quality might have been such that we should have been scan- 
.dalized by the comparison." But we need not dwell on mere 
opinions respecting the status of ratiocination in the animal 
kingdom. That the task of tracing reason to more generalized 
and primitive psychic processes is not impossible is shown by 
Binet's recent investigations (01), the gist of which is included 
in the following quotation (p. 159): “ There is no decided differ- 
ence between perception and logical reasoning; the two opera- 
tions are both reasonings, transitions from the known to the 
unknown. The analogy is so close that we were able to compare 
perception with formal reasoning, and to show that perception 
contains all the essential elements of a peripatetic syllogism 
(see p. 88). In short, perception and logical reasoning are only 
the two extremes of a long series of phenomena, and when we 
place ourselves in the middle of the series we find inferences 
which belong to both at the same time (see p. 70). Further, 
we have shown that a kind of filial relationship exists between 
perception and the reasonings of conscious logic. Thus when 
we make systematized anzesthesia, which has been developed in 
a patient relatively to a cerfain person, gradually disappear the 
thing which appears first of all is the perception of the person 
as species; and it is only afterwards, by a kind of ascending 
evolution, that the recognition of the person as individual 
takes place; now, we know that recognition is a complex oper 
ation which touches closely upon reasoning properly so called. 
All these reasons lead to the belief that perceptive reasoning 
and logical reasoning imply the same mechanism (see p. 77) 
A somewhat similar conclusion respecting the derivation of 
ratiocination is reached by Wundt (01, pp. 342; 395): 
However doubtful we may be of the complete. succes 
attempts like that of Binet, we may be confident, nevertheless, 
s of 
